Police delay during Va. Tech shooting scrutinized

Posted: Thursday, April 26, 2007

BLACKSBURG, Va. - The bloodbath lasted nine minutes - enough time for Seung-Hui Cho to unleash 170 rounds from his two pistols, or about one shot every three seconds.

During that time, Virginia Tech and city police spent three minutes dashing across campus to the scene. Then they began the agonizing process of breaking into the chained-shut building, which took another five minutes.

Once inside, as they sprinted toward the sounds of gunfire inside Norris Hall, Cho put a bullet through his head and died in a classroom alongside his victims.

A timeline of the rampage emerged Wednesday as police provided new details about what they uncovered in the 10 days since Cho committed the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The five minutes police spent breaking into the building proved to be crucial. During that time, Cho picked off his victims with a hail of gunfire. He killed himself after police shot through the doors and rushed toward the carnage.

State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller praised the officers' response time, noting that had police simply rushed into the building without a plan, many would have likely died right along with the staff and students. She said officers needed to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors.

"If you go in with your backs turned, you're never going back," Geller said. "There's gotta be some sort of organization."

Some police and security experts question the five-minute delay, saying authorities should have charged straight into the melee.

"You don't have time to wait," said Aaron Cohen, president of IMS Security of Los Angeles, who has trained SWAT teams around the country since 2003. "You don't have time to pre-plan a response. Even if you have a few guys, you go."

Cohen said that a trained SWAT team should have been able to get inside a locked building in less than a minute. There was no SWAT team at the Virginia Tech scene.

Police rapid response to school violence has become an important issue in the last decade.

After the Columbine massacre in 1999, police around the country adopted new policies for so-called "active shooters." Police no longer would respond to emergencies such as school shootings by surrounding a building and waiting for the SWAT team. Instead, the first four officers rush into the building and attempt to end the threat immediately. This system was used to end a 2003 school hostage standoff in Spokane, Wash.